Demonstrating the Professional Values
The values are demonstrated through professional relationships and practices. The connections between values and practice need to be regularly considered over the course of an individual’s career. This is an important part of being a critically reflective and enquiring professional.
They are all difficult areas to measure and evidence in practice. It is for these reasons that it is important to look at explicit ways in which to:
- reflect on the values
- understand what they mean in practice
- consider these as a meaningful part of self evaluation and future planning for professional learning.
When thinking about the values you are often asking two important underpinning questions:
- Who am I as a professional?
- Why do I think/work in this way?
There is a moral imperative that the values are enacted in everyday practice within and beyond the school context.
Importantly, it is these values that help develop and deepen teacher professionalism over the course of a teacher’s career.
Set in a professional context they encourage and support teachers to ask critical questions of, and to constantly and consistently challenge, their own beliefs and those of others.
In doing this, teachers develop professional insight and skills and consequently maintain their relevance to the education of the young people whom they serve.
In an ever-changing and challenging world it is teacher professionalism that is firmly rooted in a set of shared professional values which helps the young people of today become the thinking and responsible citizen of tomorrow.
The Professional Values are at the core of being a teacher in Scotland.